flight of fancy

when we caught wind of a Festival Day at a local regional airport a few weeks ago, our ears perked up.  (anything that's free tends to have that effect on us.)  it turned out that the family of one of my mom's friends owns a few planes that are housed at this airport, and they invited us for a private ride.  how can you say no to that?  especially when your daughter has never ridden in an airplane and has been hounding you for months about when she'll finally get the chance?  we figured this could buy us a few more years before she really starts complaining.

so we drove the 45 minutes south to this teeny tiny airport and patiently waited for our turn to ride a teeny tiny plane, and in the meantime, toured ancient aircraft and had our faces painted and tried our hands at cornhole.  when it was finally our turn, the kids eagerly clambered up the small set of steps and strapped themselves into a plush leather seat and craned their necks to see out windows that were just a tad higher than their heads.

i had to smile right before takeoff, when it struck me how totally laidback we were acting about this whole experience.  in a world where we sign our lives away for something as simple as a field trip where the kids walk across the street, there we were, about to be launched into air, and we had signed nothing.  there was no record anywhere of the mann family boarding this plane.  what would happen if there were an accident?  i didn't have any identification on me and even if chris did, it wouldn't even help us since surely his wallet would burn in the flames.  i supposed that my mom knew what we were doing and if a plane crash in sanford made the local news, she might get around to calling around to see if we might have been involved.  maybe.

some might say i was letting my imagination run wild.  but you might understand my thought process when i explain that we must have sat on the runway for a good fifteen minutes before the plane was really even functioning.  the pilot at one point turned around to us and said, "i'll just keep revving the engine until it turns over and sticks. this sort of thing happens whenever it's recently been in the air."  and he'd give it some more gas, and it would sputter for a few seconds and die again. the kids didn't seem to notice, and chris and i would exchange glances and then just laugh.  were we being laissez-faire?  irresponsible?   exceptionally trusting?  all of the above?

but my reasoning was this: we're all together.  i would have been freaking out if it were just two or three of us, leaving someone on the ground.  but we were with each other, and if something horrible happened, i figured that the four of us would all be headed to those pearly gates hand-in-hand.

and if it takes such a risk to get a free airplane ride for the kids, well, that seems like a pretty reasonable tradeoff.  don't you think?